Default notices on home loans at all-time high in S.F. Bay Area

[Auggie]

San Francisco Chronicle, 7-23-09

A key indicator of mortgage trouble hit an all-time high for the Bay Area in the second quarter, according to a real estate report released Wednesday.

Notices of default, sent to people who are delinquent on their home loans, totaled nearly 20,000 for the nine-county region in April, May and June, said MDA DataQuick, a San Diego real estate data company.

"This is one of the clearest signs of distress in a market and it's at a record level," said Andrew LePage, a DataQuick analyst.

A ZIP code analysis of Bay Area default notices showed that many of the biggest increases were in higher-cost areas. Foreclosure-ridden towns such as Antioch still had high concentrations of defaults but they decreased slightly from last year. Meanwhile, such affluent Contra Costa County towns as Walnut Creek, Lafayette and Danville saw significant rises in default notices, though the numbers still were relatively low. "Distress is creeping into and intensifying in the more expensive neighborhoods," LePage said.

LINK: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/23/BUT518TD8O.DTL&tsp=1